Parliamentary deputies of the We Can! party --Tomislav Tomasevic and Sandra Bencic -- said on Wednesday that the national recovery and resilience plan was probably the last chance for Croatia to make a turnaround in its development and that therefore it required a broad discussion.

“Even though the adoption of the document is the responsibility of government, we believe that it requires a parliamentary and public debate,” Tomasevic told reporters.

He recalled that Croatia needed to adopt the plan in order to be able to take money from the Next Generation EU financial instrument, developed by the EU due to the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Under the plan, Croatia can spend slightly more than eight billion euros for public investments towards green transition and digitalisation, and Tomasevic believes the money should be used for green transformation, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and for the creation of green jobs.

Bencic said that the We Can! had drafted proposals for the national recovery and resilience plan.

EU funds should not be spent on imports

“The eight billion euros should be invested in industries and those segments of the economy that will help produce goods and services necessary for green transformation. If our goal is to increase the share of renewable sources of energy, the recovery plan should envisage investments in the transformation of technological companies that would produce components for, let’s say, solar and wind power plants,” said Bencic.

By putting forward its proposals the platform wants to help avoid a scenario under which EU funds would be absorbed and then spent on imports, she said.

If the goal is to switch to solar energy, one should invest in the research and development of technologies necessary to produce solar energy as well as make sure the owner of renewables is the public and not the private sector, she said, noting that the platform’s proposals also included investment in green public procurement.